Books

I constantly ask people to recommend me books. Some days, I will just out and ask after saying hi to someone. It will go like "Hi. Have you read any good books lately" instead of "Hi, how are you" because that's boring and everyone almost always says "fine" or "good" or "you know, the usual."

It's not like I read the books that people recommend me, not right away anyway. I like to stockpile books on my tall bookshelf. I like looking at them, and most importantly, when I finish a book I love scanning the shelves to find something new to read. I have books that I will never read though. Like "Ulysses" by James Joyce, when the fuck will I ever read that? Never, that's when. Do I really need the collected works of Allen Ginsberg (although, I should say, I had to get it for a class, although I was really REALLY happy to get it for a class) because all of the poems of his that I like are in "Howl" and I have that and I don't really care about anything else. Mostly, I just stare at the really long books like "What is the What" or "The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay" and say "someday, someday I will give you the love and attention you deserve." And then I almost always chose something under 350 pages because I have a short attention span.

I have a short attention span with all books though. Like "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," I fucking loved that book and I got 100 pages in and stopped reading, got distracted or something. I just get impatient because it takes me so long to read a book. Like last week I read "The Man in the High Castle" and it only took me 5 days. For most people, they pry could have finished that in an evening. I read very slowly. The benefit is that I'll never have to read it again, not really, because I have retained almost everything in that book, whereas people who blaze through books often have to reread things (see: my girlfriend).

At the same time, I think I'm a book fetishist. It's like a niche market, like I'm stocking up on something I know is going to go away even though with all my heart I know that people will always fetishize books. This isn't like the newspapers, because really, who cares about the newspapers anyway? Especially when I can read about grisly murders and deaths and extortion and corrpution on CNN.com. Done and done. Although, the news has always been worthless to me. I'd rather read fictional news, Facebook status updates from my favorite fictional characters.

There's a line in my favorite poem by Robert Lowell that talks of "simmering like wasps/ in our tent of books." Tent of books. I always loved that. I want that. I could probably build a little fort with all of the books I'll never read. For a few years when I was determined to become a great writer (2001-2004) I bought every book on this essential books list I got at the public library. Mostly at the Half Price Books in Olathe. I'd go every day and buy the classics for 50 cents a piece. Will I ever read "Emma" or "Moby Dick"? No, no I won't. Well, maybe "Moby Dick," but I doubt it. I told Kasey earlier to recommend me some books and he asked what I was into and I said anything after 1950. Then retracted and said anything after 1990, but then counter-retracted because I knew anything after 1950 would be pretty manageable.

I think I like having lots of books because I just need to have a back-up plan if what I start reading ends up being too difficult or not worth the time. I won't lie, I tried reading "The Age of Wire and String" by Ben Marcus the other day and I didn't know what the fuck was happening in any of the little stories, entries, whatever they were and I threw the book across the room in frustration. Yes, the language was beautiful but I couldn't see how reading it was going to be worth my time and I felt like I was just reading it to say I read it. I didn't really throw the book across the room, I don't know why I said that. I did throw it forcibly into the back seat though, while I was waiting for Jenny to get done with her massage the other day.

Anyway, books. I feel like an outsider, an immigrant not familiar with the culture of being a human being. Like I've just discovered this thing that people have been doing for hundreds of years and I'm asking everyone "Hey, have you heard of this thing called reading? It's SO COOL." But then I think I'm being a book fetishist again, which I don't want to be. I don't want to read to be cool, I just like it because I don't have TV anymore and I get really sick of computer games and the internet after a while. Plus it's quiet. I always hated that though, the literary people, or the people who wanted to be literary. The ones who were going to be writers because they looked cool like writers. The good creative writing majors (because 80% of them are very, very bad). I always thought I was in that 20% but who knows. I remember in my poetry writing class, for the last couple of critiques I was so frustrated I just said exactly what I felt. Mostly I wrote "this makes no sense" and "this sounds like you're trying to be deep but it just comes off as someone trying to be deep" on a lot of really bad poems. I did this in my second fiction writing class too, because it was a 300 level class but it really made the major seem like something that bored housewives went back to school for. Or at least that was what the work read like. But whatever, writing is none of my business.

I knew I wasn't going to be a writer in 2006, beginning of Junior year, but for some reason I still majored in creative writing because I thought it might convince me that I actually wanted to do this and had the dedication to do so but by the end I realized I didn't and had been wasting my time. That and I was annoyed by everyone else who was a "Creative Writer," although mostly I was just annoyed at myself because I wasn't clever or imaginative enough and I had really no real grasp of grammar which is a big part of writing. Not a huge part, but big enough. Although it's funny. Reading makes me want to write, and write in the style of whatever I am reading, as I am doing now.

Recently I quit smoking because it was fucking up my body and it was expensive and mostly it was just stupid and really, I only really started due to a bad break-up and I was over it. However, to do this I had to quit drinking and going to bars, because I knew if I kept doing that I would keep smoking because the people I drink with also smoke. However, this was necessary, and really I became perfectly fine staying in and hanging out with Jenny or just spending time alone. Alone time felt really good now, when before it was mostly just kinda sad. I started drinking coffee because well, I need something that I can quit. Someday I will quit drinking coffee, but I don't know why because coffee is acceptable enough. Although I do have high blood pressure, so I'll have to quit that. And salty stuff. And perfectly grilled steaks. And pretty much everything else I love. Anyway, the point was, if I do one thing other things will happen in waves. Like quitting smoking has ultimately made me a much healthier person physically and mentally. I don't drink anymore because all of my sorrows got drowned a long time ago and mostly, I can't fucking afford it because no one will give me a job. I'm saving money, and wishing I'd been doing this all along because it feels good on the body. I make coffee at home with the french press thing and I pretend that it isn't the Dunkin Donuts brand coffee my mom buys me, even though I really, really like the Dunkin Donuts brand coffee. I like the glamour of books, even though I'm contradicting stuff I said two paragraphs ago or so. This is why I'm a bad writer, because I forget that I'm supposed to have a point. I'm a terrible editor, too. I got flak from my editor at the Pitch for a review of the Peter Bjorn and John show and immediately went back and reworked it and cut out all of my snarky bitterness that was infecting it and made it a lot better. That made sense, but on my own I never do that because, well, short attention span. Like, for instance, this entry is way too long and has gone way off topic if there ever was one and the spellchecker thing quit working halfway through so it's probably riddled with spelling errors and typos, although I'm a very good speller and would constantly mark that shit up hardcore when peer-editing stories in college, oh yeah, and run on sentences. Blah blah blah blah blah. I want to write a novel.